The closing session of Wherecamp skews out to a conversation of the big three companies within geospace perhaps killing the ecosystem of development. Despite being hosted at Google's HQ, there's a no holds barred "you kill kittens" approach to trying to get thef frustration noticed. Comparisons to Wal*Mart seem abound.
One thing related to an earlier post, however, was the fact that Microsoft have a little better model for funding external development teams - something that enhances the profile of a large company, gives them a product and also pumps money around the community. Let the BBC move towards this, please - there's some brilliant community-driven sites out there that need money and perhaps won't ever make a profit.
Broken record, though we're way behind in a lot of spaces and need to get some outside involvement (and put some money out there) for the future of bbc.co.uk. Time for a team-call of interested parties methinks!
Sunday, 18 May 2008
Geo for Good
A session at wherecamp focussed on sourcing local produce, something more than a little useful. Despite the fact we got quite bogged down with the evidence of whether this is actually better for certain people/environment/etc, it still seems as though having a source for where you can get local produce from would be darn useful.
So this got me thinking... A site (or sites) that do some of the following:
Also - Need to see Darwin's Nightmare - pretty dark but sounds good.
So this got me thinking... A site (or sites) that do some of the following:
- Let people contribute to a store of product source of origin and where they were bought from (ie most "fresh cherry tomatoes from Tesco in York come from either Morocco or Cyprus)
- Let people contribute/view local produce available, possibly tied to seasons (ie "show me all the in-season produce that can be/is produced in a 100mile radius)
- Show people where to buy local produce (with indicators to what "local" means)
Also - Need to see Darwin's Nightmare - pretty dark but sounds good.
Saturday, 17 May 2008
Frameworks + Data = The Web
There's a bit of a problem out there in "web2.0" land... There's a zillion frameworks being put together - some useful, some not so. Some would be really useful if they were to be populated with a gallon of data from "somewhere". This seems to be the current problem surrounding most of the new sites out n about here at where2.0 and wherecamp.
A real frustration over the lack of shared data from governments as well as other organisations is leading to some ideas being left to not reach their full potential. Thing is - this isn't new is it? When was "raw data" ever at your local library? When could you ever actually get the exact degrees celcius of a river somewhere. Or the exact number of people in an area with a certain illness? Not to say this shouldn't happen but there's a real impatience around some of this movement.
Things take a while. Try out ideas on smaller, accessible data sets (or community driven ones, UGC scientific data would be cool - think for Global Warming monitoring etc) and prove it works, then show governments what they're missing out on.
Some really good examples of SOME local authorities in the US putting out transport info, but this seems to be something that's common sense - nothing major. Probably worth pointint this out though - the politics of politics leaves a load behind. Who in local government knows what API is anyway?
A good chat that didn't go all the way was how we can semantically model geo data for routes other than cars and public transport routes. Seemed to highly cycle-biased (understandable) but touched on some pedestrian issues. Wish there'd been more though. What I do note though is that I'm not sure google give directions of a fastest route in SF when one of the roads might be at a 45 degree angle...
A real frustration over the lack of shared data from governments as well as other organisations is leading to some ideas being left to not reach their full potential. Thing is - this isn't new is it? When was "raw data" ever at your local library? When could you ever actually get the exact degrees celcius of a river somewhere. Or the exact number of people in an area with a certain illness? Not to say this shouldn't happen but there's a real impatience around some of this movement.
Things take a while. Try out ideas on smaller, accessible data sets (or community driven ones, UGC scientific data would be cool - think for Global Warming monitoring etc) and prove it works, then show governments what they're missing out on.
Some really good examples of SOME local authorities in the US putting out transport info, but this seems to be something that's common sense - nothing major. Probably worth pointint this out though - the politics of politics leaves a load behind. Who in local government knows what API is anyway?
A good chat that didn't go all the way was how we can semantically model geo data for routes other than cars and public transport routes. Seemed to highly cycle-biased (understandable) but touched on some pedestrian issues. Wish there'd been more though. What I do note though is that I'm not sure google give directions of a fastest route in SF when one of the roads might be at a 45 degree angle...
Photo geek such as myself....
The demo of gigapan was pretty awesome. Who needs more megapixels when you can take loads of shots?
Now if you could strap that to the bottom of a RC plane...
Now if you could strap that to the bottom of a RC plane...
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Location without the Map
From all of the presentations over the past 2 days, something struck me as a slight trend - people don't know if they need so many maps. There's an issue here that we're all just getting a little carried away by saying "location equals map". Well it doesn't, location can be pretty vague, to quite accurate.
I don't every look at a map on Dopplr, thought it deals with location. I don't actually need to see results on a map for most of my search results either, but with Google's new maps release it seems as though they're putting more and more content onto one.
I think maps are cool. What i'm not sure of is whether or not i like those pushpins full of content that doesn't actually need to be on a map. Some of the best examples of location-based content can be the simple ones that do things without worrying about visualising.
In the same vein, two presentations struck me as putting what we've learned in the past few years into really useful contexts, away from the usual "cool" stuff; Lisa Parks (University of California) proved how satellite imagery can be crucial to lives and moments of need for analysis. This deals with location but also over time - a record of how things were. Aimee Stewart (LifeMapper), on the other hand, showed some immense data analysis of species across the planet from natural history museums. Great stuff as it only deals with the location data when it needs to.
I'll fill up this blog with some detailed presentation topics next week.
I don't every look at a map on Dopplr, thought it deals with location. I don't actually need to see results on a map for most of my search results either, but with Google's new maps release it seems as though they're putting more and more content onto one.
I think maps are cool. What i'm not sure of is whether or not i like those pushpins full of content that doesn't actually need to be on a map. Some of the best examples of location-based content can be the simple ones that do things without worrying about visualising.
In the same vein, two presentations struck me as putting what we've learned in the past few years into really useful contexts, away from the usual "cool" stuff; Lisa Parks (University of California) proved how satellite imagery can be crucial to lives and moments of need for analysis. This deals with location but also over time - a record of how things were. Aimee Stewart (LifeMapper), on the other hand, showed some immense data analysis of species across the planet from natural history museums. Great stuff as it only deals with the location data when it needs to.
I'll fill up this blog with some detailed presentation topics next week.
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
Where am I?
Location, Location, Location... A packed day of speakers at where2008 leads me to think that the fact I work for somewhere that doesn't have to make money is a bit of a godsend, especially in the realms of webspace. Some awseome demonstrations of technologies show just how empowered the global web community are - with one key problem, how do we "monetize" them?
Obviously this isn't just exclusive to online mapping - there's a hell of a lot of stuff that has the same problem. Get an idea, build a beta, get popular then...... erm, whatdyado? Apart from selling yourself to one of the Big Three, you're at a bit of a loss for a lot of the time. The audience have had "free" lavished on them for the last 10 years - thats not going to go away.
So the BBC should maybe step in. Got an idea? Not profitable but still going to draw in the punters? Come to Auntie. We should be aiding development of these things, nurturing them and making the transition to university lab or bedroom up to a widely used reality. Surely if all those years ago we bought h2g2 (which IMO turned it into a slightly-more-than-useless set of web pages with a BBC logo on them) then we could turn our occasional funds to something more relevant and community (both the UK population and the web) worthy.
Am I just mad?
Perhaps something to try out to prove whether I am would be to build my own drone. :o)
Obviously this isn't just exclusive to online mapping - there's a hell of a lot of stuff that has the same problem. Get an idea, build a beta, get popular then...... erm, whatdyado? Apart from selling yourself to one of the Big Three, you're at a bit of a loss for a lot of the time. The audience have had "free" lavished on them for the last 10 years - thats not going to go away.
So the BBC should maybe step in. Got an idea? Not profitable but still going to draw in the punters? Come to Auntie. We should be aiding development of these things, nurturing them and making the transition to university lab or bedroom up to a widely used reality. Surely if all those years ago we bought h2g2 (which IMO turned it into a slightly-more-than-useless set of web pages with a BBC logo on them) then we could turn our occasional funds to something more relevant and community (both the UK population and the web) worthy.
Am I just mad?
Perhaps something to try out to prove whether I am would be to build my own drone. :o)
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
A decent break
Working at the BBC as you do, or as I do, you get to meet some pretty annoying people who end up being Monsieur Tape-Rouge to get in the way of creativity. So imagine my surprise when a meeting with someone who you'd usually associate with blocking becomes someone you'd probably call an enabler.
In over 6 years at an organisation that generally parades an air of creative talent and opportunity to set the world alite there's been few opportunities to do so on the web end of our output. Not only do we lag behind with cutting edge risk-taking on a platform that is now embedded in the majority of license-fee paying homes, we generally give up on such projects half way through to make another support site for Andrew Lloyd-Webber.
Lets see how this pans out but for now, perhaps there's light in this tunnel. Just another few yards of Red Tape to run through first... Now where's those scissors?
In over 6 years at an organisation that generally parades an air of creative talent and opportunity to set the world alite there's been few opportunities to do so on the web end of our output. Not only do we lag behind with cutting edge risk-taking on a platform that is now embedded in the majority of license-fee paying homes, we generally give up on such projects half way through to make another support site for Andrew Lloyd-Webber.
Lets see how this pans out but for now, perhaps there's light in this tunnel. Just another few yards of Red Tape to run through first... Now where's those scissors?
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